W.H. says clean coal has future

The Obama administration still sees a future for coal, White House energy adviser Heather Zichal said Tuesday.

Coal has been “a crucial energy source in the past. It’s a crucial energy source today,” Zichal said during an energy breakfast briefing held by POLITICO Pro at the Newseum. “We see it certainly playing a role in the future as well. But from our perspective, what the president’s focused on is, you shouldn’t have to choose between your job and clean air.”

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It was the second time in as many days that Zichal had to defend the administration’s relationship with fossil fuels. On Monday, she said the administration wasn’t “singing ‘Kumbaya’” with the natural gas industry and was committed to seeing coal burned “in a more environmentally friendly way.”

Republicans chastised President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign last week for not listing coal on its website in a description of the future U.S. energy mix. The campaign later added “clean coal” to the site.

“When it comes to our power regulations, what we’ve done is focus on a pathway for clean coal,” Zichal said Tuesday, citing money that’s been appropriated for research and development on coal as well as funding made available to “clean coal” projects with the 2009 stimulus law.

While the White House and the energy sector “don’t see eye to eye on everything” when it comes to policy, she said the relationship remains workable.

“We can’t get it right unless we meet with industry to understand what their needs and priorities are,” she said. “At the same time, we need to make sure that we’re taking proactive measures to protect public health and the environment.”

As for natural gas, she said Obama believes “that fracking can be done safely and responsibly” but that industry and the government need to allay communities’ concerns.

“Industry gets that and understands that,” she said.

Also speaking at the breakfast event, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) called for doubling federal spending on energy research despite political polarization in Congress.

“We want a lot of cheap, clean energy,” said Alexander, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, adding that the issue should have the same focus the U.S. gave to the Manhattan Project.

Alexander jabbed the Obama administration for not devoting a greater effort to controlling energy prices.

“The real flaw in the Obama administration’s policies, at least to start out with, was the argument for expensive energy — ‘We’re going to raise the price of energy as a way of controlling environmental problems,’” Alexander said. “That’s just exactly wrong.”